Death of a Dreamer

William Collard died last week in the British village of Storrington, Sussex. He was 75, balding, a wool merchant. For 30 years he dreamed of a tunnel under the English Channel.

The Enthusiast.

Collard had it planned, on paper. There would be a broad-gauge line (he preferred the wider roadbed for safety at high speed) from London to Paris. The underchannel bore would be 24 miles long, between Dover and Calais. Electric locomotives doing 92 m.p.h. would pull trains carrying 508 passengers. The trip would take two hours, 45 minutes. The fare would be -L-2 ($8). There would be 22 trains daily. The cost would be -L-190 million. Annual gross receipts would be -L-35 million; net profit, -L-12 million. That would be 6.3% on the investment.

Collard was so enthusiastic that in 1918 he was called as a witness by the Government's Channel Tunnel Committee. They wet-blanketed the idea but did not daunt Collard.

The History.

That episode was only one spasm in the tunnel's long history. It was originally suggested by Napoleon, in 1802, to Charles James Fox. For nearly three-quarters of a century it remained merely an idea. In 1867 a French engineer, Thome de Gamond, exhibited the first practical drawings. In 1881 what became the still existent Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. was launched. Queen Victoria, who got seasick on the Channel crossing, gave it her blessing. Bores were started from Shakespeare Cliff on the English side of the stormy passage, and Sangatte, near Calais, on the French.

Island Intact.

Controversy developed. Joseph Chamberlain, Board of Trade president, favored the project until he lunched, one day, in the dead-end hole. It was very dusty; his suit was dirtied; the experience antagonized him toward the scheme. Gladstone favored the tunnel; Lord Randolph Churchill quashed it with a cogent remark. Said he: "The reputation of England has hitherto depended upon her being, as it were, virgo Intacta." Periodically the project was revived, discussed, quashed. Britons mostly agreed with Winston Churchill's father, had especial reason to do so when the Germans reached Calais in 1940.

And Now.

The Tunnel Co. still has a directors' meeting once a year. Their business is usually done in the time it takes Big Ben to strike twelve. It consists of a statement that the annual dividend is passed.

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